


Further Adventures in Real Estate — Squatter's Rights

by Idle_Hans



Series: Pocket Universities [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, world-building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24857587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idle_Hans/pseuds/Idle_Hans
Summary: Fun Fact:By some accounts, there are more disused dwellings in London alone than there are witches and wizards in all of Britain.
Series: Pocket Universities [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798099
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Further Adventures in Real Estate — Squatter's Rights

"Bill, may I ask you a question?"

"Sure, Harry."

"Does curse-breaking have anything to do with wards?"

"Quite a lot. Why?"

"Well, if a piece of land has wards around it, but it seems to be abandoned, is there a way to find out if it really is abandoned and no one living still has claim on it?"

"It depends on the situation. Lots of old families have lands that they haven't used for years, but they wouldn't take kindly to someone else moving in. Is this about someplace specific, Harry?"

"Yes and no. In Surrey where my aunt and uncle live, there's a patch of overgrown woodland between Whingington and Little Whinging. I used to use it as a shortcut between Privet Drive and St. Grogory's Primary School. Dudley had a bicycle, you see, so he was much faster than me. Anyway, it always seemed that no one ever went there but me. There weren't any worn paths, or rubbish, or cubbyhouses, or dog poo, or anything. Just trees, and shrubs, and a ruined cottage right in the middle with old trees growing up through it to show how long it had been abandoned. I hadn't been back there since I started Hogwarts until this last summer and I needed somewhere to get away from the Dursleys. Well, this time I realised that the land has anti-muggle wards all around it. They feel every bit as old as the ones on the muggle side of the Leaky Cauldron, but they're still quite strong. I also found enchantments on what's left of the cottage, but they're so faded I couldn't tell what they were without using my wand."

"Well if the border wards have outlived the house wards it means they're rune-based and there are wardstones buried in the corners of the grounds drawing on ambient magic to keep them strong. You probably helped recharge them a little every time you passed by. Good professional work, that. Are you thinking of fixing up the cottage and living there, then?"

"Not really. I mean, it's a bit too close to my relatives and all the people they've been telling I'm a dangerous delinquent all these years. But if I ever found another place like that, it'd be nice to know if I could take it over without treading on anyone's toes."

"Well, the ministry keeps a register of places in Britain where wizarding folk live, but it's based on floo connections and the Hogwarts Finding Web. That's the magic that lets the Quill of Acceptance and the Book of Admittance keep watch on magical children so they get a Hogwarts letter. But if someone sets up home somewhere and never gets the floo connected and never has children, or they're a family of hedgewitches, the place wouldn't be listed."

"What's a hedgewitch?"

"A hedgewitch is someone — man or woman — who didn't go to Hogwarts but learned a bit of magic anyway. Sometimes it's because they didn't get a letter, and sometimes they got a letter but couldn't afford the books and uniforms and school supplies. I mean, please never say this in front of the twins or Ron or Ginny, but if Dad didn't get the subsidy for ministry employees, he and Mum wouldn't have been able to send all their children to Hogwarts, not even with the help that Charlie and I are giving them."

"Oh. ..... I thought everyone got a Hogwarts letter if they could do magic."

"No, you have to do some bit of magic strong enough to impress the Book of Admittance before you turn fourteen. Otherwise, no letter. Take Neville Longbottom. From what Ron says, Neville only did accidental magic strong enough to get a letter because his great uncle kept on deliberately putting him in life-threatening situations that accidental magic could get him out of. Not everyone's willing to take that kind of risk with the lives of their children."

"Wow. Every bit of accidental magic I can remember doing, happened because one of the Dursleys did something nasty to me. Oh, and that one teacher who believed everything Aunt Petunia ever said about me. Are you saying that if they'd been nicer, I might never have gotten a letter?"

"Harry, listen to me. With or without your Mum's help, you sorted You-Know-Who in your nappies. There's no way the Book of Admittance would slam shut for that. You owe the Dursleys nothing. You got to Hogwarts in spite of them, not because of them."

"Thanks, Bill. ..... So, you think that cottage near Little Whinging belonged to a hedgewitch?"

"Well, if it did, she or he was quite an accomplished hedgewitch to be using rune-based anti-muggle wards. Maybe they traded with someone to set that up for them. That would explain why the house wards were so much weaker. But back to your first question: yes, once you have wand rights then there are charms you can do to spot places with anti-muggle wards on them from quite a distance away, so long as there are no anti-wizard concealments in place as well. Then you can check whether anyone has a claim on the place that's still active."

"So I could find myself a home that way? Activate the anti-muggle concealments on my Firebolt and fly around at night casting these other charms until I spot somewhere that lights up?"

"Yes, but I'd say that's only the best way to do it if you want a place to live close to muggles. If you're happy to apparate or use the floo in order to get to the shops, you can live absolutely anywhere. And there are plenty of abandoned muggle buildings in out-of-the-way places all over Britain. There are ministry laws and procedures you'll have to follow, but put the right wards up around a place and no muggle will ever be able to find it again."

"Isn't that stealing?"

"Harry, the muggles outnumber us many thousands to one, and that ratio is only getting worse. The magical world is too small and crowded to worry much about nicking little bits of muggle land here and there if we can get away with it. If we buy land from muggles, we can't ever make them forget about it completely because there's a record of the sale. That means at least the edges of the land have to stay visible to the muggle world, and that places enormous limits on what we can do with it. Whereas, if we just take somewhere that's half forgotten already, it's easy to make it completely forgotten. Maybe that's stealing, but we prefer to think of it as archiving."


End file.
